By Takura Zhangazha*
In mourning former South African President Nelson Mandela, everyone will want to claim him
for their own. And that is a good thing.
Some will want to claim him as part confessionals
about their own countries’ complicity in aiding apartheid. Others as
participants in domestic, continental and global struggles that brought down
the last bastion of settler colonialism in Africa. Others still in their own
failures and fervent desire to be judged as better players in the struggles
against colonialism and imperialism.
Like everyone else, I will join the queue. I will however
claim Nelson Mandela as an African icon before being held in awe by his global
reach. An African icon in the sense that before we were enamored to Mandela as
a global brand (as they say in marketing) he was an African leader faced with
decisions as tough as those that faced other African icons of his and later
times. He was never a leader to be deemed
the ‘acceptable type’. Otherwise they would not have had him and others
imprisoned on the infamous Robben Island for so many years.
Neither was he one to betray either his cause or his
comrades in the fight against apartheid. He was not a romantic who viewed
people from either a religious or a messianic standpoint. He was a leader who was cognizant of his
placement in history, even before the age of satellite television, internet and
mass marketing. The ‘feel good’ portrayals of this African icon, came long
after he had decided that the struggle for his people’s freedom shall be his
life.
Like all icons of Africa’s broader struggle against
colonialism of the post World War II period, Mandela and his colleagues
(Sisulu, Tambo, Govan Mbeki, Slovo, among others) knew that even though inevitable, liberation
would require great personal sacrifice.
I do not for once think that Mandela envisaged himself
becoming the iconic figure that would adorn murals, cups and t-shirts, Che
Guevara (whom he greatly admired) style by the 1970s. His primary task was, together
with others and in a multi-racial fashion the pursuit of the goals of the
Freedom Charter.
That he was freed at a time the Cold War was ending while
the global media and its attendant capitalism were reinventing perception and
reality does not take away the seriousness of the historical task that was
African liberation and independence. He
could have been Cabral or Nkrumah or Nyerere and the task would still have been
an enormous one. Even while shaking the hands of his oppressors.
I am however aware that there are fellow Africans who will
attempt to mistakenly view Mandela from
the perspective of not having achieved the goals of the Freedom Charter as
though he wrote it alone. Or those that will argue that he made mistakes in
relation to the CODESA talks that led to majority black government in South
Africa. Apart from theirs being an opinion that we must respect, we would have
to point out that this is a mistaken and ahistorical view of the man.
Mandela and even Oliver Tambo’s revolutionary and generational task was to
lead the ANC and South Africa to attain independence as a first stage of what
is still referred to as the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). And because there is no politics without
stages, they were correct to negotiate with the white Nationalists for an
inclusive and ceasefire constitution.
That initial task of the revolution done, it was and remains
up to subsequent cadres of the NDR to continue working towards the fulfillment
of the rest of the aspirations of the anti apartheid struggle. In Nkrumahist
parlance Mandela sought first the political kingdom in anticipation that
everything else will follow. It has been slow for the South Africans, but it is
a process that remains democratic and is most definitely underway.
There was never going to be a complete departure from the
past in South Africa just as there has never been a complete departure from the
same in Zimbabwe. We all still grapple with the vagaries of colonialism and
imperialism. We however are not beholden to them. Nationalist sentiment alone is not enough either
for South Africa or for Zimbabwe. Mandela,
like Nyerere and Cabral, taught us that we must navigate our ideals with what
is most pragmatic while ensuring that future generations do not forget that
their task is to take our revolutions to higher stages and within generational
contexts.
And as a member of subsequent generations of Africans, I first encountered the political (not branded) Nelson
Mandela via a collection of his speeches and writings edited by South African
revolutionary, Ruth First in my early years of high school. It was a booklet
published by Zimbabwe Publishing House tilted, No Easy Walk to Freedom.
Through reading and re-reading it, I learnt, without knowing
a lot else about the ANC or his personal life, that somewhere in Africa was
still a man of democratic principle and full commitment to the liberation of
his people.
When he became President of South Africa, many thought that
he had become an 'acceptable' African leader either on the basis of either the
constitution or deciding to pass on the baton stick after only his first term. He however remained true to his ideological and historical origins. Even when he met with Fidel Castro and invited the latter to a state visit
( to much international superpower chagrin).
Or where he hugged Muammar
Ghadaffi of Libya and thanked him for Libya’s support for the anti-apartheid
struggle. Then one knew that yes Mandela was affable to the global eye, sometimes
viewed as a saint, but whatever else we might think of him as, like many others,
he was an African icon, in African terms and in African time. Before he was anything else that we all wish him to be.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity
(takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
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